


Standard of Care

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, And a whole lot of coming together, And misunderstandsings, Bones is too old for this shit, But first there's feelings, Crew as Family, I promise, M/M, Sexuality is a spectrum, Slow Burn, Then the... coming together, There is sex coming, a lot of it, so to speak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At 28, Leonard McCoy finds himself divorced, disgraced, and unable to practice medicine pending investigation. When he took the job overseeing student-based health initiatives at SFCU, he never expected to find the best friends he didn't know he needed, the family he wasn't looking for, and the person who makes him question everything he thought he ever wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standard of Care

**Author's Note:**

> For reasons that will remain my own, I am posting this from a different account than the rest of my fic. I am hopeful you will still give it a shot.

It’s 5:30 in the morning, and Leonard McCoy hates his life.

A jackhammer has taken up residence in his brain, pounding away in time with the horrific mechanical screeching that’s emitting from his phone. The offending electronic is somewhere across the room, where he’d left it when he stumbled across the glorified jail cell he calls a hotel room and collapsed, face first, onto the single most uncomfortable mattress this side of the Mississippi.

The wrong side of the Mississippi, at that.

Leonard groans, blearily stumbling to his feet in search of the cell phone currently attempting to split his head in half. He manages to thumb away the alarm through some miracle of dexterity and just stares down at the time.

He never expected to be the type of man who had to get up at 5:30 on Saturday morning. On labor day weekend. To report to San Francisco City University’s Student Union building at 7:00 to sit in on a first aid training class.

He’s a doctor, not a lifeguard.

Not anymore.

That little voice, a cross between his mother and his ex-wife, is as sobering as the lukewarm shower Leonard rushes through before hastily combing his hair and donning jeans and a green polo shirt. He makes a point not to think about how his hair makes him look like someone’s middle aged father and not the twenty eight year old he is. The fact he is someone’s father is a thought even more chilling that the mom/Jocelyn hybrid of disappointment cackling away at the back of his skull.

Stopping only to grunt out a coffee order at some fast food employee who doesn’t get paid enough to deal with grumpy disgraced failures, he makes the five block walk to SFCU’s campus in decent time. He’s been there only once, two weeks prior for the job interview that had landed him his illustrious new job as Staff Consultant for Student Union Health Initiatives.

Six months ago, Leonard was an emergency surgeon at Atlanta’s busiest trauma center, and now he’s a glorified camp counsellor for a bunch of kids. His role, as the Dean of Students had explained, would be to oversee four student volunteer groups that operated on campus. The safe walk assistance partnership, where a pair of students would walk anyone to their home, within a certain radius of campus. The student crisis outreach peer support, where students offered anonymous phone and email support to their struggling peers. The Sexual Health Awareness Group, which focused on safe sex education and provided free condoms all over campus. And finally, the real reason Leonard’s credentials had made him even remotely qualified for this job: The Student Emergency Aid Team, providing immediate response to all campus first aid needs.

The volunteer culture at SFCU had impressed Leonard, having not experienced anything quite like it during either his undergrad or med school. And while he was assured that the student leaders he’d be working with were all professionals who took their volunteer positions seriously, he wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t be spending the next year approving the expense reports of frat boys.

Even for the early hour, campus seemed eerily quiet as Leonard made his way across the liberally landscaped walk up to the student union building. Fall semester doesn’t start until after the long weekend, but he’d certainly expected to see more signs of life. He’s fumbling with his phone to pull up the directions he’d been given when he realizes with a start that the door he’s trying to open is not actually moving under the force he exerts.

Cursing, Leonard looks up at the sign above the door, proclaiming SFCU STUDENT UNION and glances back at the orientation email he’d been sent, stating he’d want to be there for 7:00. He grunts and pulls at the door handle once more, scowling in protest when it continues to mock him by being locked.

Even the job he doesn’t want is keeping him out.

He’s still standing at the door, trying to scroll through the eight pages of emails he was sent about this day and figure out where he went wrong when someone clears their throat behind him.

Leonard turns, finding a young woman with white-blonde hair piled on her head, wearing an SFCU t shirt and yoga pants that fit like a second skin. She can’t be more than 20, and he immediately feels like the worst kind of creeper for even noticing how the spandex and lycra cling to her legs.

“McCoy?” If she notices his discomfort, she ignores it, extending her hand and speaking in a businesslike tone. “Christine Chapel, Coordinator of SEAT.” Leonard digs around in his memory for the acronym, settling on Student Emergency Aid Team after a long enough pause to add a stammer to his reply.

“Ah, yes. McCoy. Leonard McCoy.”

“Dean Pike asked me to meet you, since you don’t have an ID card yet and the student union is locked for maintenance over the long weekend,” Christine explains, reaching behind him to swipe some sort of ID card to a sensor by the door and he hears the audible click of a lock releasing.

He follows her into the building, which looks like a cross between a sports stadium and his high school atrium, as Christine explains that there’s a temporary ID card waiting for him in his office and he’ll be able to get his picture taken for the real one when the school opens up for orientation week on Tuesday. For all that she’s a tiny slip of a girl, it’s clear from the confidence in her tone and the way she leads Leonard up three flights of stairs without preamble that Christine Chapel takes her work with SEAT very seriously. 

The fourth floor of the building is a large, open-concept space with study tables, couches, and several vending machines. Along the back wall are four offices with the logos for the four student services he’ll be overseeing, a glass-walled conference room, and another, larger, corner office with an empty nameplate.

“This is the All Hours Lounge,” Christine explains as she leads him to the corner office. “Not the best place if you want to study, since it tends to be rowdier than the library or quiet study areas, but it’s a general congregating area for students. A lot of campus clubs book the conference room for their meetings, and the SEAT, SWAP, SHAG and SCOPS offices are all here. This is you.” She indicates the door, which stands open, revealing an almost clinically empty room. Nothing but a glass-top desk, executive chair and a shiny computer are inside the space, which boasts floor to ceiling windows on two sides and a nauseatingly great view of most of the SFCU campus.

It’s enough to trigger Leonard’s latent fear of flying and he makes a point to turn his back to the windows to address Christine again. “Thank you, Miss Chapel, I appreciate the tour.”

The look she gives him is beyond Leonard’s ability to interpret at seven in the morning. “The desk drawer will have your temporary ID, and sign on information for the system, if you want to start getting acclimated. The other coordinators should be arriving soon and I believe the plan is to do introductions and get right into the recert. I’ll be over in the SEAT office if you need anything.” With that, she dismisses herself and leaving him alone in this barren office.

He’s on the other side of the country from his little girl, his medical licence is suspended, and he’s about to spend his weekend watching teenagers learn CPR.

Leonard should’ve gotten a larger coffee.

\--

The next two student service coordinators that Leonard meets are as professional as Christine. Nyota Uhura, who is in charge of the outreach line, is a communications and psychology double major who obviously feels very strongly about mental health and peer outreach. Spock, the coordinator of SWAP, the safe walk program, has the dubious honour of being the most monotone person Leonard has ever encountered, even as he proclaims it to be only logical that student safety be a priority for the student union. They both make it clear they have ideas for initiatives their groups can implement throughout the academic year and he hasn’t even set up his email calendar before he’s got each of them scheduled for meetings next week.

The final coordinator, who runs the hilariously acronymed Sexual Health Awareness Group, or SHAG, is a boisterous young man named Montgomery Scott. He proceeds to tell Leonard, at length, that he wants to make sure all the ladies and gents on campus have access to birth control because he was once in ‘the thick of it’ with a girl only to realize neither of them had a condom, and the mad dash over to the convenience store across the street had been a real buzzkill.

“She was gone by the time I got back!”

Leonard suspects the girl’s insistence on safe sex had more to do with ditching her overzealous date than a strong passion for prophylactics, but it’s clear that Scott’s heart is in the right place… even if it isn’t doing his thinking most of the time, by the looks of it.

Any response is cut off by the sound of a new voice exclaiming “Morning kids! Ready to grope each other in the name of first aid?”

McCoy can’t hear the exact words of Uhura’s reply, but there’s no mistaking the scathing tone they’re delivered in. Scott is laughing as he bounds out of his chair and exits Leonard’s office without so much as a farewell. 

Leonard follows at a more subdued pace, in time to see six feet of blonde adonis, decked out in an SFCU t-shirt and cargo shorts give Spock an enthusiastic hug, complete with slap to the back. He’s lean, but well muscled. A runner, Leonard’s completely off-topic and unhelpful mind supplies. And while he can appreciate a well proportioned human being as much as any other red-blooded bisexual man, it’s been a long time since he’s laid eyes on someone and been struck with such an immediate bolt of want.

Dimly, he remembers something in his paperwork about not fucking the undergrads.

“Why are you even here, Kirk?” Uhura’s voice is impressively icy. “Didn’t they give you a restraining order along with the degree in June?”

Leonard should be ashamed at how quickly he files away the fact that Kirk has graduated, but he’s too busy trying to remind himself to keep his urges under control.

“Funny thing about universities, Nyota,” Kirk draws out her name with gleeful delight. “They also have graduate programs.”

Uhura’s glare is withering, but Scott steps in like it’s nothing. “Jim boy!” He exclaims, pulling the man into a hug that’s far more reciprocal than the one bestowed upon Spock.

“That’s Jim Kirk,” Christine supplies quietly, and Leonard realizes he hadn’t even heard her join him at the door to his office. “He used to run SHAG, before handing it over to Scotty. He’s an astrophysics grad student and RA over at Enterprise Hall.” She raises her voice enough to call attention, shooting an apologetic glance at Uhura. “He’s also the only certified First Aid instructor I could find, since my quals need to be updated this year too.”

Kirk turns then, and all of Leonard’s good intentions of not sporting an erection before 8am on his first day at work are lost to the most startlingly blue eyes he’s ever seen.

“This is our new boss,” Christine explains, levelling Jim with a nicer look than Uhura’s but still somewhat frosty. “Leonard McCoy.”

He accepts Kirk’s handshake, noting that his grip is firm and self-assured. “Nice to meet you,” He assures with the kind of flippant charisma that Leonard is certain has gotten the younger man laid enough to be the one man poster child for why SHAG existed in the first place.

Leonard only nods in response. “I’ll let you get on with it, then.” He’s sitting safely behind his desk, willing his body under control and tapping away at the computer as he listens to Kirk give a surprisingly thorough first aid refresher.

It makes for a long day.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and Kudos are the fuel that keeps the writer writing!


End file.
